Bay Psalm Book

Bay Psalm Book, common hymnal of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Written by Richard Mather, John Eliot, and Thomas Weld, it was published in 1640 at Cambridge as The Whole Book of Psalms Faithfully Translated into English Metre. The announced effort of the authors to make a literal rendering at the expense of elegance is successful if the crudity of the verse be a criterion. This was the first book published in the Thirteen Colonies.